I baked it just for you. As the title suggests (”Wikipedia’s Awkward Adolescence”), I tried to hit the middle ground; like Google and the Big O, Wikipedia isn’t going away any time soon, so I’d rather be constructive than dismissive, especially for a tool I use every day.
Wikipedia is a hugely fascinating culture; to my mind — though this wasn’t the article in which to spell this out — the editorial culture reminds me most of church groups that have developed extralegal rules. Squint just enough, and it’s just St. Margaret’s Guild all over again. (All religious organizations have these guilds — usually women’s groups or men’s groups, though sometimes organized around other themes. Some religious leaders speculate it’s just one organization busing the same two dozen people between churches, temples, and mosques.)
This isn’t criticism; it’s an observation about human behavior. We seek structure. Everything is not miscellaneous. We want to alphabetize, we want pecking orders, and every organization coalesces into leaders, followers, and (where the writers sit) kibitzers.
But for fifteen years I’ve been under strict orders not to write about church life (something that makes me wonder if it’s time to try fiction), so we’ll let it stand right there. If I wrote a book about Wikipedia, though, I would insist on having a chapter called St. Margaret’s Guild, editor permitting.
(Oh, and there’s a glitch in the article I’m trying to get fixed; Clay Shirky suddenly pops up sans attribution.)
Posted on this day, other years:
- Easy-Bake HDTV - 2006
- PODCasting - 2004
- International PEN calls for release of Cuban prisoners - 2004
7 Comments
“The Big O”. Ha.
Now I’m going to be very confused about The OH in Ohio. Especially because I liked Parker Posey wanting to be a librarian in Party Girl.
It’s an excellent article, covering alot of ground and offering fairly good-sense solutions.
Congrats on this well-deserved biline.
Thanks all! Fun to write (yeah, the pain has dulled and the baby is cute, so once again the birth pains are forgotten…)
Very good article. I think you gave a little to much weight to Perlow’s side of the story when it came to eGullet. Have a look at the “deletion review” for that article, if you haven’t already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_March_6
While there were mentions of the site in major publications, those mentions contained almost no substantial information about the site, making it impossible to have the article based on outside sources.
It was deleted with the explicit understanding that it could be recreated in the future if substantial sourcing was found.
This is a common pattern; most of the perceived deletion abuse happens in cases where there really isn’t a substantial amount of reliable secondary source information on the topic.
Anyhow, I thought your piece was excellent overall.
Wikipedia’s servers are in Tampa; JWales is moving to SF. CENTCOM is in Tampa. Jack Kerouac died in St. Pete.
Sage, thanks. I think if deleted articles went into a morgue, then perceptions of abuse might lessen. Appreciate your points.
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